Slow
by Reno Spiegel
Summary: Yuffie's wandering through a broken Wutai, in a lot of ways.  Reno's just kind of wandering.  Companion piece to 'Sandbox,' for my tenth year in fanfiction.


**Slow**

The pot outside is smashed. That's new.

The rest of it isn't. The damp, soft red pillars wrapping around where the walls used to me. The brick-like shingles from the roof ground under the feet of tourists who still wander this way. There aren't bits of paper anymore, the wind having taken those away fairly quickly. The sign is mostly sun-bleached, and the rugs left have been chewed down to threads, and one of the bigger chunks of stone looks like it should, like a giant, hand-loved tortoise eye, looking up at the clouds.

Turtle's Paradise has been rotting for the better part of a year.

But this is the first free day I've had to come beat the shit out of it.

My shurikens are all in a museum somewhere, and before Godo and I ditched Wutai, he made every blacksmith he could find promise not to make me any more. I hated him for it for a while, resorted to kicking at his shins on more than one occasion, until one day he grabbed me by the shoulders and I saw he was crying.

"Please," he said, the third time in his life I'd ever heard it from him, "don't leave me alone again."

Sentimentality and all. But the old man took me in through all the shit I'd left him with, so I respected that. He sat next to me, too, through the media blitz, which was about as bad as it could get. I don't know if they actually planned it in shifts or what, but all hours of the day for months, reporters and journalists and fans and soccer moms were coming up to the Pagoda, each one "not meaning to intrude, just wondering if they could talk to me." I tried to pretend I was gone again, but apparently a fake moustache doesn't get you a damn bit of privacy around here. Maybe it's because I was still wearing the same shorts.

Like I said, though, Godo, Gorki, Shake – they all toughed it out with me as long as they could. Then some bad seeds got in, started saying the wrong things. Apparently there was a question about my lineage, and when we proved that wrong, people wanted to know how I could "soil the Kisaragi name" by spending time with street scum. And then I _may_ have punched one of the reporters.

Anyway, we went to Icicle Inn for a while, left the town in the hands of some relatives. It got worse from there, but we'd seen it coming. Soon the infighting, and after that the factioning, and then the whole place collapsed – not collapsed, maybe, but went downhill from what it was. A lot of people left town. A lot of tourists went away, replaced by information hunters wandering around like wounded dogs, biting at everything, sniffing around, some perturbed curiosity in their eyes.

One night Ganno, who owned Paradise last, got grabbed walking to his bike by someone looking for me. He beat the guy unconscious with a club, hung a closed sign in the window the next morning, and skipped town. With nobody to maintain it, the weather – and the dogs – took it apart.

The shurikens. Right. What I mean to say is that all of those are gone, so I'm basically pelting the stacks of rubble with a few dozen throwing knives, some of them thudding into place, some of them sparking off the steel supports that are about the only thing left standing. I'm pissed about something, and I'm not sure what it is, but I came back to figure it out. Godo's headed to Mount Nibel soon with the rest of the fatcats who paid to have the mountain essentially fumigated. He's building another house up there, and I can't tell if I'm going to go with him or not.

In short, I'm goddamn confused, and throwing these knives at this stupid shit wreck of a bar is the only thing that's making me feel any better.

"You _would_ be here."

I turn and fling another one, and that fucker catches it. He had his hand up for it, which figures, too. I wasn't sure if I recognized the voice or not, but there he is, creeping across the bridge with that wiry little smirk at the edge of his mouth, and I realize I would've thrown it either way.

Mister Red himself.

"Fuck out, Turk," I tell him, and toss another one to him. He catches that one, too, and shoots them both back in the same swing. He's a little cleaner than he was twelve years ago. He's got his hair shorter, pulled back into something classy that looks more Wutain than Mideelan, more regal than broken home. "You look good."

"You kiss your father with those lies?"

I kick a rock at him and he swats it away, sitting at the end of the bridge and cocking his head at me. "You, too, Fluff."

Reno and I have been running into each other for the past decade, off and on. It's some kind of weird game we're playing, and we're both guilty. It's like sewer rat flirtation, in that we kind of try to kill each other but we don't try very hard. It's the closest thing I have to a friendship with anyone from the whole Meteor thing. We bonded over it for a few months, and then we realized we were all way too screwed up to be around each other and agreed not to anymore. I think he did about the same thing with the other two, whatever their names were. I asked him once, but he just shrugged it off. That's the most we ever talked about it.

But we haunt each other, out of boredom or whatever else. I haven't paid a tax in twelve years, something about being the savior of the Planet and all, and Reno just flashes his old badge and the same thing happens. He doesn't pay rent – he just shovels the sidewalks, he says, and promises not to kill anyone anymore. I asked if he ever feels guilty about it and he said that all his savings burned up when ShinRa went down, literally on both parts.

So it lets us wander around a lot, borrowing Chocobos or cars or whatever. Sometimes I hang out in Mideel for a week just to see if he's going to show up, and sometimes he'll wave at me from a ski lift, swigging out of a flask. It keeps us entertained as much as anything else.

"Why do you call me Fluff?"

"Why do you call me Turk?" He's wearing a white suit now. He said it was the most obnoxious thing he'd ever owned. I told him that was because he'd never taken responsibility for himself. Then he said he could outdrink me, and he was right. We shared a taxi back to his place and I left with his wallet while he was in the shower.

"I get nostalgic for when I hated you," I lob.

"Those were the days. I get nostalgic for when you were still attractive."

"Bite me." I sit down, too, stretching my legs out. His scars have gone away in the past few years, some kind of slow-form plastic surgery he's been getting with what little gil he's held onto. He said he wants it gone, wants the old street life out of his new one. He's been living in hotels for the past five years, leaving his things in a few of them because they always know he'll be back.

I scratch at my knee and say, "How do you keep finding me?" It's not something I've ever asked before. The first time, I chalked it up to dumb luck; after that, just similar taste in rough neighborhoods; but Icicle Inn was the one that keeps getting me. You've got to _mean it _if you're going to chase someone out there.

"Tracking device."

I snort. He looks up from his shoes, straight-faced. I narrow my eyes at him. "Are you fucking me?"

"Yes," he says, and then, "Well, no. I mean, yes. But about this. No. Yes? What's the question?"

"Stop that."

The smirk spins itself back into his cheek. "I follow you around for months at a time. It gives me something to do. Sometimes it's an accident, though. I didn't know you were coming into town this time around."

"So why're you here?" I let the rest of it slide. Who has time to get wound up anymore?

"_Clearly_," he groans, standing and jumping from foot to good, a nervous habit, "I came for a drink, but it looks like you hate me enough to keep that away from me, so I guess we're going to have to fistfight over this." He flails his kupo-sized fists in front of him like a drunk ape.

I sigh. "This fucking place, huh?" I turn and pull my arms around my knees, looking over all the forgotten pieces of what used to be Wutai's most hip spot. "This is the first place I had a drink, the first place I got drunk, and the first time I drunk-puked on a boyfriend." I stand, too, walking over to where the door was, pawing at where the knob should have been. I know he's listening, so I just keep talking: "I think I'm pissed."

"Why?" He's a few feet closer.

"I dunno." I can tell how defeated I sound, like a roller spinning on an empty conveyor belt. "I – I think I feel old or something, and I guess I knew that was gonna happen, but I guess I didn't think I'd ever come to realize it, y'know? Like, this fucking place, y'know? Turtle's Paradise. What'm I supposed to do with this? This place is my childhood, and now it's just a pile. I learned my life lessons right over there, and now I now I'm supposed to be in charge of this city, but we're moving to Mount Nibel, and what's that? That's running away, or, like, the most public disappearing act in history. What's he gonna do up there?"

"Maybe he'll find some peace."

"Maybe he'll just die," I fire back, not really mad but irked at his sudden solemnity. "Maybe we'll all just run off to the mountains and die. Don't dogs do that, run away to be alone and they die in the woods?"

"I never had a dog. By the time I was old enough, we already lived under the Plate."

"Can I get a drag of that?"

"Of what?"

Reno's not smoking. I turn and rub my eyebrows together at him. He's leaned over the railing, picking at the splinters and looking down at the river, which isn't running as strong as it used to. I scurry over to him, grab his chin, and make him turn to look at me. He shines his teeth, suspiciously white. "You're not smoking,"I confirm.

"I stopped smoking." He says it like someone says, "It stopped raining," but you can't quite tell if they miss it or if they're glad to see it gone. The little I've come to know Reno, I think I know that it's both.

"When did you stop smoking?"

He pauses. "After I had my last cigarette."

"Fuck out."

"Two months ago," he mutters, giving up the act. "It didn't feel right anymore. I used to smoke with Tseng all the time, but he's gone, so whatever. I think I did it to be like him." He's looking down into the river again, brushing some stray hair out of his eyes. "'sides, I figure I'm getting to the point where I need a hobby or a drug or something, but I tried most of 'em and didn't like a lot, so I'm improvising and going backward." I can't tell how seriously to take him. "Anyway," he says, louder, "you're pissed at Godo. You're always pissed at Godo."

"I hate Godo."

"You don't hate Godo." Now, of course, he's _less_ condescending than I want him to be. "You're just pissed at Godo."

"But now I'm really pissed at him," I heave. "Or maybe I'm not. Goddammit, I don't even know, you know? I thought this was supposed to stop after you turn twenty, or after you move out, or after you save the Planet or something. I'm too old to be having daddy issues, or absent parent issues, or whatever the fuck this is. I'm supposed to be the princess of Wutai, and now I'm just the heir to a condo on a mountain, and it's not even Da Chao."

"I've always liked the way you say that name."

It's heavy for some reason, heavier than he usually gets. We've had our moments, a few times since we started playing this, where it's gotten really sober all of a sudden. Neither one of us want to settle down in any sense, whether just living in one place for too long or trying to "meet someone" or whatever. No, I think we're content to just wander back and forth across the Planet, seeing all the same things from different sides, occasionally running into each other or someone else we knew from some other life when there was more spring in our step or something.

Still, there are these moments when we're talking to each other and it's hard not to remember that we've known each other for as long as we have, and as haphazard as it may be, we've used each other to piece ourselves back together.

"What about you? What are you mad about?"

He shakes his head with a smile. I like the way he smiles, not in an attractive way but in the way that ever since he gave up the ShinRa gig, his smiles have always seemed genuine. "I can't get mad about things anymore. I spent years hating my dad, and then I beat the shit out of him one day and got mad at myself for that, then I forged some papers to draft myself into the Turks, got mad on drugs and power for about ten years. But it's like the cigarettes. One day I looked up and just said, 'Man, what's the fucking point?' I can't be mad. I've spent too long mad."

I'm keeping my eyes on him, trying to call his bluff or something, and it's not there. "When you were a Turk, what did that do for you?"

"Honestly," he says, voice falling from some high place, "I had an excuse to be mad: I got _paid_ for it. I got paid a fucking _lot _for it. So I did that for a while, and it was kind of like being an anger hooker, and then I got old and ugly and then I stopped."

"Did it help?"

He shrugs. "I think so." Back to looking at the river, chewing at the inside of his bottom lip. "If it didn't, I don't think I know that. We do a lot of shit that doesn't actually help, though, y'know?"

"Hell, Reno, you've almost got me believing you've got a heart under there."

"Yeah," he says, "you've almost got me believing you've got tits under there."

In twelve years, that's how it's always gone, and then he leaves. We argue about something, he makes a comment about my chest, and then he saunters off, popping his lighter up and down his sleeve like he's never told the joke before and that finally, _finally_ he's pulled it off. That's really the routine. And then we run into each other six months later, or later that night, and it starts all over again, and we're both fine with it. It's just how it's always been.

I lift myself off the railing and walk back toward Turtle's Paradise, trying to remember where all my knives are, but I don't hear the usual rustle of his blazer. I turn a few seconds later and he's still there, back turned, staring down into the river and picking bits of paint off the barrier. I say his name and he doesn't respond. I walk back over, put my hand on his back, one of the only times I've been the first to touch. "Reno," I say again, and he tenses.

"You should go be with your father." He doesn't turn around as he says it, but verbally, he's facing me full on, and there's some door in his tone that's flung itself wide open.

I say his name again and he does turn this time, that same look in his eyes that Godo had when he asked me to stay, but Reno's not looking at me. He's looking over my shoulder, or maybe at my cheek, or maybe as close as he can get to my eyes without actually letting me in, and still without looking he reaches for my shoulder this time and says it again: "You should go be with Godo."

And there's some question I'm supposed to ask, some vault of Reno's that I know he wants me to open, but I've never known how to do it with him. We've been at this point, maybe too many times, and I know it because I know for a fact that I do it to him, too.

I remember one night, lying between him and the wall, writing awful slurs on his back with my fingernail, watching Wutain characters make themselves and burn themselves away in the dark, when he told me that he thought he didn't know how to love someone who was good to him. It was the same moment that we're having now, like getting a book and only being able to make out the last pages.

Then it's over. He turns back around, leans back over the rail, and I can feel the energy that says we're not supposed to talk anymore. I give him a few more seconds, and I think the hair on my arms is standing up or my legs are shaking, and I'm just pulling myself back together and thinking about my knives again – anything to not think about that look on his face – when he says it.

"My mom died."

That's the flung door. Suddenly there's a whole other dimension to my understanding of Reno. Of course he must have had a family at one point, but as far as I knew, they were the same people that paid him for secret work, and those were the only brothers and sisters he knew. He'd pulled it off perfectly, making me and probably everyone else forget that Reno Tarshil had to have _come from _somewhere, not just appeared out of thin air all sass and lank.

"Reno –"

"Two months ago."

_He's not smoking anymore._ He's picking larger and larger splinters from the railing, tossing each into the river, his wrist snapping back and forth more forcefully now. I'm trying to think of anything I can say, trying this time to find the question, and I don't know what it is but I ask the only one I can make come out of my mouth: "Were you there when she went?"

He freezes. His arm is in the air, his head is down, and I think – I know – that his shoulders are quivering, but I can't move toward him. Everything in this moment is frozen except the river. I realize that I'm not breathing, but it somehow doesn't feel like something I can or should fix. I'm just stuck, waiting for time to start moving again.

"No," he says. "I..."

The only thing moving is the river; it's not running as strong as it used to.

"I forgot she was alive."

His shoulders are shaking, and shaking, and shaking.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Think of this as a kind of companion piece to my last one here, **Sandbox**. The story is this: I told myself that no matter where I was with my writing, I would come back here and post something for my tenth anniversary on the site (albeit a day late). It was interesting to do it, and I can only relate it to another story. Last summer, after my grandmother died, I went back to the family home right before we sold it, for one last walk-through. I hadn't been inside in eleven years, but all these things I knew so well, and must have remembered from somewhere real, were still there. And as silly as it sounds, that's how it felt to write this piece. These characters are my old house. They're still here, and it's good to see them again, even if they might get bulldozed any day now. Thanks for reading along, folks.


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